Natural hazard mitigation in Southern California

food provisions. Recovery can then be defined as all activities undertaken to restore normal life
after a disaster. The most important aspect is the rebuilding of damaged property and
infrastructure (Godschalk e.a. 1999, Quarantelli 2003).

The term hazard planning refers to an integral approach of reducing disaster risks, including all
four phases of the above mentioned process: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
Often, community awareness and partnerships between various levels of government are
included as important aspects of hazard planning (Quarantelli 2003, Palm & Carroll 1998).
This paper focuses on the first step in the hazard planning process: the planning and
implementation of mitigation measures.

As seen above, mitigation is often described as all activities that reduce the risks of natural
disasters. But what exactly is this risk? In order to answer that question it is necessary to firstly
cover two other terms: vulnerability and exposure. Exposure is defined by the amount of
people and their property that are exposed to the hazard (Mitchell 1999). A person’s or a
group’s vulnerability depends on its characteristics: vulnerability is inversely proportional to
the capacity of the people that are exposed to the disaster to resist it and recover from it
(Wisner 2003). Risk can now be defined as a function of the characteristics of the hazard H
(frequency, magnitude), the vulnerability of the receivers V, exposure E, and mitigation M
(Wisner 2003, Mitchell 1999):

R = (H • V • E ) - M

Before one can start with mitigating an hazard, it is extremely important to gain a thorough
understanding of the risk itself (Godschalk e.a. 1999, Olshansky 2001, Orians & Bolton 1992,
Cutter 2005). In a risk assessment, the risks of a possible event are examined and defined as
clearly as possible. Examples of questions that are answered in a risk assessment are (Cutter
2005):

• What is the likelihood of the event taking place?

• What are the magnitude, frequency and duration of the event?

• Where might the event take place?

• How many people and buildings will be exposed?

• What is the vulnerability of people and places to the hazard?

• What are the potential human consequences of the event?

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